I’m not some idiot who brags that I use “Arch, by the way”. I don’t even like mentioning it without being prompted.
I think I was selected because of my Linux familiarity. It’s been one of my best qualities. I use Arch, by the way. Brian came to me for help with Git and drive partitioning, because he saw me connecting to the internet by command-line. I’ve been able to advise on how computers work and provide tech support for everyone. I’m deputy lead for our shadow IT department. I use Arch, by the way.
I don’t know if Arch is that valuable. Sure, I consider some degree of courage in the face of a command line interface as prerequisite to being a good software engineer. But at the end of the day, it’s a party trick. You can connect to the internet by GUI if you feel like it. I make things harder for myself because it’s rewarding to struggle, and it’s fun. There’s a certain stereotype of Arch users. Unkempt, malodorous, noisome shut-ins with autism. Usually, queer. Usually, geniuses, monsters, entities of such awe-inspiring ability that any understanding of their inner workings are forever sealed from you. It’s a sort of correlation. I have no idea which comes first. I hope I don’t smell bad.
It’s known as a very difficult operating system for experts only, that’s where its prestige comes from. It trained me in persistence and reading comprehension. Now, I use it daily. Sometimes, I feel like I gave something up by using Arch and working on software alone for so long. I would have become a software engineer by just paying attention in class and focusing on the orthodox way to write and design code, without spending all those days alone working on my own projects, and using Arch.
But again, I don’t know which comes first. It could also be said that I had none of the opportunities afforded to students at the UofA, beyond working on software in extracurriculars and on my own, or that I’m an asocial smelly hermit wizard, so Arch suited me perfectly.
Still, I can’t recommend Arch to anyone, because the benefits don’t outweigh the sacrifices. In ascending order of how I perceive their difficulty, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora Silverblue, PopOS, CachyOS are good choices. Ubuntu happens to be Brian’s choice, Adam uses some distro of Fedora and used to use Arch.
This sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself, but it’s not entirely the case. Like I said before, my predecessors run laps around me in terms of theory. But the codebase, with due respect, I hold my output to higher standards. I have a sort of eye for the quality and design of software that only comes with seeing and writing a lot of software. I think I’m alone in that regard, despite not having an internship from a big company. I’ve seen a lot of code, because I put a lot of time into looking at and writing code. There’s an insurmountable gap between me and my colleagues in that regard, and I don’t bemoan it.
I’ve heard that NixOS is similarly difficult and customizable to Arch. I like the idea of NixOS, so I think I might try that next.